On Mar 11, 8:39*am, Kathleen > wrote:
> Aingon Atelia wrote:
>
> >>Aingon Atelia wrote:
>
> >>>>On Mar 1, 3:28 am, sf > wrote:
>
> >>>>>>>>I believe it now. What happened to poor Blinky?
>
> >>>>>>>He died.
>
> >>>>>>I gather that, but from what?
>
> >>>>>We suspect it was pneumonia.
> >>>>>--
>
> >>>>So was his vomiting a red herring?
>
> >>>Started with some kind of flu-like thing, and then progressed into
> >>>something resembling pnuemonia. *Again, this is from things he said,
> >>>there has been no official pronouncement yet.
>
> >>I thought people only died (in the modern world) of pneumonia if they
> >>were already ill with something else?
>
> Not necessarily. *People still die of the flu and its aftermath. *That's
> why we try to vaccinate against it. *The second sickest I've ever been
> was with influenza. *I'm a strong, healthy, middle-aged adult and I was
> so sick, with high fever and respiratory symptoms and terrible body
> pain, that I was more than a little scared. *And it took me a long time
> to get well.
>
> (The absolute sickest I've ever been was with dengue fever that I got
> from a mosquito bite down in Mexico and I was more than a little scared,
> I thought I was going to die.)
>
> > I was reviewing some of the email he sent while he was sick, and
> > something jumped out that I hadn't noticed before. *He mentioned that he
> > was having trouble holding onto a new bar of soap with his right hand.
> > I'm wondering if perhaps he didn't have all kinds of things happening to
> > him at once.
>
> Even "just" the flu can crash your system, creating a cascade of all
> sorts of symptoms and failures.
>
> >>Though in all the times i hastily jumped out of the *pool when blinky
> >>swam up i never recall him saying anything about any previous or
> >>chronic conditions.
>
> >>Even his complaints about stress that took him to the Joshua tree park
> >>to de-stress & where he took some lovely photos never seemed anything
> >>more than the usual, run of the mill, ordinary, everyday, modern world
> >>stress.
>
> > Nope - other than a couple of chronic skin issues he was basically
> > healthy, at least to my knowledge, and I'm the one he would have told
> > first. *He certainly didn't tell me he was as sick as he obviously was.
>
> He probably didn't know how sick he was. *In modern times we've
> forgotten how deadly the flu can be. *The influenza epidemic of 1918
> killed over 50 million people; young, old, rural, urban, rich or poor.
>
> Medical advances give flu victims a better shot at recovering but it
> still comes down to supporting the patient while their own immune system
> fights off the virus.
>
> The flu shots don't offer 100% protection, especially not when they
> guess wrong about the season's dominant strain. *But even if you do
> catch the flu the shot's effects can lessen the severity of your
> symptoms. *I work as a substitute teacher. *My exposure is massive, and
> if I get sick, the numbers exposed to me are massive. *And then they
> expose their families ... *So I get the damned shots.
>
> And that's my recommendation to everybody who doesn't have a medical
> reason not to... *Get the damned shots.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

These are sad times for 24hoursupport.helpdesk.

RIP Blinky the Shark